The Queue: What's your /played?

Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today.

What you see above? That's not part of my diet and weight loss plan (I'm down to 263 as of this morning, by the way -- as Olivia says, yay #TeamCarrots!). That image above is pure deliciousness. My other gig had a crazy little potluck yesterday, which I can't go into detail about because it was so crazy, and we all had to bring something insane yet edible. So I brought pigs in a blanket (hot dogs wrapped in dough, baked), stuffed with cheese, with more cheese melted between the blanket and the olive. All held together with a toothpick. What do I call this amazing dish?

Stephen Colbert's American Cheese Hotdog Dream Wrapped in Love.

Adam asked on Twitter last night:

What's your /played?

I wanted to know this because of my recent switch from my warlock to my warrior as my main. Over the next week or two I'll be going through some serious gearing in order to get up to speed and start contributing to the guild; it shouldn't be too hard given the kind of effort I'm able to put into it right now, but it's still going to be a challenge.

Anyways, I typed in my /played and found just over 150 days on him. Now my warrior was my main from classic through Wrath, so that kind of number shouldn't come as any surprise. Across all the toons though? I don't know... and I don't want to know. I'm already a little bit shell shocked by spending 150 actual full days in-game. I could have written an opus in those 150 days, could have written a novel, could have blogged more, could have networked more...

But you know what? I'm not upset that over the past seven/eight years I've done that. I'm very lucky that I've been able to adequately space out my family life, my work, and my personal time. It's all about perspective with figures like this. After all I need a break so my mind can rest after a long day's work (you'd be surprised how stressful blogging and online content can be). Without that rest I'd not be in the place I am now.

There is another aspect to that 150 hours though... there is. Maybe in another article I'll get into it someday. Not today though. Let's move on.

Shao asked:

What sort of world ending event will Blizz come up with the day WOW comes to a screeching halt expansion wise? Take a wild guess.

Ideally they won't. When WoW does shut down I want it to go out as it is, no fanfare, no big bangs, just Azeroth existing. The pets running around Stormwind, the lambs and cows grazing in Elwynn, the shop keepers selling their wares in Orgrimmar. At the end of it's life WoW needs to leave just as it came in, a humbled tribute to a great world that we all play in.

Now...

I don't expect WoW to ever be shut off at this point. I've mentioned this on the site before, but I think there's one gigantic reason why: the game itself has taken on a major cultural role. That means that it's going to be a unique piece of study for future scientists, and they are going to want to get their hands on it. Computers are still basically following exponential growth, and one day WoW's servers and clients will be easily run on an emulator or two. I have very little doubt that the Smithsonian would pick up WoW and run it as a self contained exhibit 100 years from now. Because it is truly the world's first exceptionally popular and massive virtual reality, it holds a unique scientific position, and that basically ensures it's never going to go truly offline.

Paul asked:

What if the sc2 trilogy is setting us up for a starcraft mmo and what if titan is secretly that mmo and blizzard is trying to distract us... dun dun dun!

It's not, Titan is all about [FIVE PAGE EXPLANATION REDACTED].

Dyliiss asked:

My long time guild (Affinity on Suramar) has been trying to recruit to fill up our 10man group to try and revive the guild from post xpac burnout (cata) but have had zero apps or any luck what so ever with recruiting. It seems our server is not as populated as it once was. Now the officers (me and a few others) and the GM have been talking about a possible server transfer to a higher pop server (PvE Alliance heavy) to try and breath some new life into our guild that has been around for about 7 years with veteran raiders and a great group of people.

Now we haven't talked with the guild about this as of yet but plan to put the word out to see what people think. My question is do you or anyone else have any recommendations for a high pop PvE Alliance heavy server preferably a west coast server?

My guild went through the same thing, and we landed on Lightbringer-US. It's a good realm with a healthy market, and people no longer complain about the sever when we're doing recruitment. We've had some success with pugging people as well. And hey, if your guild falls due to recruitment issues, my group is looking for some fine folks. In fact, anyone is welcome to apply.

Have questions about the World of Warcraft? The WoW Insider crew is here with The Queue, our daily Q&A column. Leave your questions in the comments, and we'll do our best to answer 'em!